Hello Kamban,
I am a little late coming in.
The benefits are :
1. The commercial company takes 20,000 lines
of code and extend it adding 10,000 lines
and release the 10,000. Took 20,000 and
release 10,000, is it not a benefit?
a. The company saved the money to write
20,000 lines of code from scratch.
b. The 10,000 lines released to the community
is reviewed by other interested developers
and the company gets bug reports and fixes
and improvements.
c. The company makes money by supplying the
resultant application and service support.
Since the initial investment was low (20,000
lines of free code), they can price only for
their service and gain a larger market
share.
If they had to start from scratch the
pricing has to be much higher cutting off
much of the potential customer base.
2. Now take a company who is going to take a
free ride on the 30,000 lines of code:
a. The get 30,000 lines of code without
paying a thing.
b. They will try to understand the code (to
compete with company 1 above) and package it
to provide their own solution to the market.
Whatever the changes, bug fixes they made,
they release back to the community and
company 1 also gets all of them.
c. Company 1 still has an advantage as the
original author they understand the
application better and provide a better
service.
The better company wins !
If you want an example of company 1 take Red
Hat and have a look at their history.
Company 2 is probably Mandrake.
So, what is the problem?
Best regards,
Ma SivaKumar
On Saturday 26 June 2004 16:05, bsd unix
wrote:
But that's true! I'm a nobody. I have
benefited from the GPL! And I have no
doubt I will continue to enjoy the
benefits :)
Are you a student or a company or a
consultant ? If you are a professional
company, could you be clear on how you are
enjoying the benefits ?
--Kamban
